What's this? What's this?!

[biochemastery]

WHO: Tyl Regor and YOU!
WHERE: Heropa, various Porter cities
WHEN: Immediately after Tyl's port-in
WHAT: Tyl tries to attack Porter base staff, gets sedated, then muddles his way through having a human body, his new powers, eating a food, and low doorways.
WARNINGS: None yet. Probable spoilers for Natah, once he gets talking to people.

[ooc: Tyl is a verbose lunatic, so for those coming in on a direct link to this page, I've provided some in-page navigation links here so y'all can jump around to find your fancy:

A. Heropa: Out on the street
B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power
C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated
D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.]

Introduction: Alien abduction!!
Ow. Owowow ow ow. Light. Light outside his eyelids was making a very spirited attempt to get in. No. Go away. He had a hangover. He had the worst hangover. The kind where you couldn't remember the party, but you had the vague suspicion that it hadn't been fun.

A shadow passed between him and the light, and dared to open his eyes just a little. He saw a fuzzy blob.

Well, that was helpful. It mumbled at him, and he gave it a suspicious squint.

"Ooeryoo," he demanded, and then frowned in annoyance. That hadn't come out right. Had it? Hadn't. Was he still drunk? High on something he'd made in the lab?

"Jusgenyoo chektofer," the blurr said, and that sounded wrong too. Ears weren't 'earing right, along with everything else. He felt far too tired to function.

Sedated. He was definitely sedated. More than usual. Couldn't entirely blame them, not after the last time he'd needed emergency care.

No, wait, he could blame them, because he was in charge, and he didn't want to be sedated right now.

"mdun," he said, trying to pick himself up, but that failed with a wave of dizziness as soon as he tried to lift his head. Whoof. Wasn't gonna stop him arguing the point, though. "Gemeeup, god wurg tdo." Also--wait, emergency care? Why'd he think that a minute ago?

"Yoor doongud," the slowly resolving blob said, in an unfamiliar voice. "Yuulbee baggon yor feep in notyme."

Wait. That voice was unfamiliar. Female, too smooth. Blob didn't look right either, had the proper number of parts but they weren't right. There was lots of hair, more than he'd ever allow on a med tech. And no full mask. And he didn't see the proper blue-n'-bloodstained working doctor getup either, that was teal. Teal! Who would ever wear teal!

He was just about to launch into a rant when a thought gave his brain a nudge. The eyes. The eyes were wrong. Definitely not on the yellow-orange-red spectrum he should be seeing. Whoever this was, she was not grineer. They had creepy blue eyes and--what were those stripes sitting over them? He'd seen those before. Right? Right. The over-eye stripes.

Corpus did tattoos there. Didn't they. Drew your attention to how ghastly they looked. That was it.

"Ai no, itz ver dizzoryentin," the horrible Corpus interloper said, leaning over to reach for something. Something felt wrong about that too, even though she didn't touch him. "Buttchor wakeng ub fass, an sommun will com into see yu soon."

Oh no. Nonono no no he figured out what'd felt wrong. He'd felt air move on his face when she'd reached by him. He shouldn't feel anything there. That was wrong. Really wrong. That meant his mask was off. And he'd been breathing through his nose, which meant they'd taken out the tubes that fed him air. He didn't need those to breathe outside the mask, but if his mask was gone, he was covered in germs. And if the tubes were gone, then they'd gone reaching inside of him, who knew what they'd done in there, and they'd probably taken his limbs too--

Wait. No. Yes? No. When he looked down (Whoof, more spinning head), he saw hands. They were in the right spot to be his. But they weren't. They were flesh hands. He didn't have those! He used to, back in the cloning lab, back when he was one of the bodies hanging in tubes rather than the one making them grow. But his had been cut off, just like everyone else, when the peripheral neuropathy set in.

And now there were hands here, curling into claws as he stared at them in confusion and mounting anger. The skin wasn't even grineer! "Waddav yo dun t my hams?" he demanded, trying to sit up again, cobwebs in his brain dissolving in the acid of rage. "Hoos hansre thees? Wire they om my arms? Where am I?" He was getting louder, voice clearer, maybe, maybe coordinated enough to flail one of those horrible meat hands towards the probably-Corpus and catch the front of her shirt, dragging her closer to him.

Yes. Definitely coordinated enough for that. Hello, ugly. You're gonna have a bad day.

"Think you can just steal my work and get away with it?" She was trying to cut in with some protest or another, but he wasn't gonna let her take anything else, not even words!

"Not gonna happen." He leaned in towards the almost-definitely-Corpus, and had another, horrible realization as he did so. "How dare you take my legs! Do you know how hard I worked on those?"

A couple of other someones were coming into the room. Well, bring them on! He was still mostly sedated and blurry-eyed and noodle-armed and maskless and there was so much meat, but he'd take them anyway! "Maybe I like yours better. Won't know 'til I try! Come 'ere and and give me your legs!"

Two pairs of big flesh hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down, pinning him to the medical chair. That did not go as he'd planned. To be fair to him, though, he hadn't had a plan.

Something bit into his neck, and he swore extravagantly in Grineer. "How dare you, slimy eels! Trying t' steel my worg, my toob men, may shaeplee pards!"

The room was going blury again. "Can haffem! Therr mime. Mime."

And then he was out.


A. Heropa: Out on the street

Ow. Light. Again. And this time it was the sun.

Alright. Take stock of what he vaguely remembered. "Woke up. Got sedated. Woke up again, some little stern-faced twit lecturing me 'bout Earth, of all things." He was feeling better now, though, if he was talking to himself.

But now he was somewhere. "Warm. Still don't have a mask on, definitely covered in germs now. Probably gonna get sick. Ugh." Whowever'd taken him apart had known how to work on grineer bodies, why'd they know so little about the grineer immune system? Jerks.

"Sky--there's a sky, important to note that--sky is blue. Breathable. Only a few places where this could be." In the grander scheme of things, at least. "Mars would be too much to hope for. The gravity didn't feel right either. Venus? No. Not cold enough, not enough black rocks and robot fish."

Was this Earth? Really? Where were all the trees? Wait--why were there all these blocky buildings? And humans! why were they so tall?

Oh. Right. Thieves had stolen his legs, that was why.

Nothing felt right, actually. He stopped walking--where'd he been going?--and yanked up one of the cloth sleeves hiding his horrid new arms. He should be able to find the graft point, maybe it was just plugged into his somatics somehow, some sort of fake flesh arms--

No. There was no dividing line of a fresh graft, no skin from his own stumps to be seen on either arm. The alien skin went all the way up as far as he could see it, all his ports and plugs smoothed away to nothing. Couldn't even feel their attachment points against the muscle when he squeezed. "What kind of sick mind would do this? Alad? If this is Alad's work--gonna tear the little twitchies off that jellyfish, he's floated free for too long."

His tone was careening from distracted to curious to snarling rage, sending humans into wide arcs around him to avoid him. He tugged his sleeve back down with a sigh of frustration--then he saw a glow on his wrist. "What?"

Up went the sleeve again. There was a glowing tattoo on his wrist. That wasn't Corpus script, though. And it said one word, in big, bold letters: REGISTERED.

"Really." He sneered down at it contemptuously. "So. Part of some flesh-loving freak's collection, then. Got any more of these hiding on me?"

Couldn't see his shoulders very well, the straps of his backpack--wait, he was wearing a backpack?--got in the way. Legs were still too awful a proposition to think about. Instead he lifted up his shirt.

He should've known something was wrong already. His hips were an utter disaster, too thin and lacking the bombshell curves he'd engineered for himself. But his waist, too! They'd completely redone everything, made him blocky as the lowest trooper in a ditch somewhere, all wrapped up in that same skin.

This is intolerable!

"You!" He rounds on the closest person. If they're in grabbing range, they're absolutely grabbed. Hello. A rather muscular man with nerd-pale skin is now demanding your attention.

"What planet is this? Why am I here? Why have I been stuck in this ruinously unfashionable body? Tell me. Quickly."


B. Still Heropa: Testing out a new power

Wait. Backpack? Why'd he have a backpack?

He wrestled it off of himself, twisting his shirt around himself in the process. Ugh! He needed better clothes. A better body. A better universe that really appreciated him properly.

There wasn't much in the bag. A comm unit, a little folded pocket thing with some paper rectangles--fifteen of them, covered in "20"s and "10s" and pictures of human faces, ugh--and a folder of more paper. A slip with an address on it, a glossy little pamphlet that immediately made his eyes glaze over, and--that's a profile on himself. Why's that there? To intimidate him? Flattery? Try harder., sure, it acknowledged his skill with R&D, but--wait. What's this thing about powers?

He squinted at the page, trying to think through the remaining fluffy clouds of sedation. Custom Work. Wait. Was that saying he could--?

Oh thank the Queens, he wasn't stuck in this runty little body. Did that make sense? No. Did it raise many, many questions? Yes. But being short was an abomination that needed to stop. It worked for his darling little Manics, but he needed to feel tall.

Wait. What was that last one? 'Oldest Grineer'? Why would he ever--wait. Wait, did that mean--

Hold off on looking like himself for a minute, this he had to see. Take out the comm unit, record this, document, see the results on the screen--wait. How did these 'powers' work? Like with his augments? Just think about the function he wanted and--

He nearly drops the comm. In the space of a blink, he's taller, much taller, somewhere back up over 2 meters, the comm unit looking small and flimsy in his hand. And on the screen--His face has changed. It's not familiar, but he knows, he knows, he's the Empire's expert on themselves, he knows this is what their faces should look like, genes cleaned up and reset to how they used to be, with limbs that didn't fall apart and organs that didn't betray you, genetics he could take back as a new template--

He'd started to laugh, wild and crazed and triumphant. To someone watching, it might not look like much has happened: He was six feet tall, now he's grown about nine or ten inches. His face has changed, sure, his eyes are almost scarily blue now, but there's nothing immediately obvious that would make someone cackle like that.


C. Any Porter city: Food is complicated

He was slowly starting to become aware of a problem. You know, beyond being stuck on Earth, surrounded by humans, et cetera et cetera. This was something more fundamental even than that, a problem he should've seen coming, but always seemed to forget until it loomed its ugly head again:

He was getting hungry.

No, really, this was a problem. His usual diet? Protein slurry, not from the big batches the rest of everybody had to suffer through, his was higher grade stuff, sanitized and carefully balanced to match his unique needs.

Other grineer could kind of digest forage they found in the field--he certainly had back in the day, and he could tell anyone who'd listen that sand skate was not worth the effort. But now? He'd rearranged and abridged his organs to the point where that wasn't an option anymore. That's just the price of fashion!

And normally? Wasn't a price at all, it was a bonus. With the high-grade stuff he used, he could just send it straight into his digestive system through one of the ports he'd installed. Why bother with eating when you could just plug yourself into some nutrients? Eating was boring!

But now he was calculating, trying to figure out how soon he could mix an acceptable batch. He knew all the components that went into the solution, but could he get his hands on them before he started to starve? And with an all-organic body, he'd need more to--

Wait.

Oh right! He had a working digestive system now! Shove any old human food into his mouth and he'd be fine. Perfect! Now, to find a food or two.

Turned out, that was easier than he'd suspected. It seemed like every other building here was devoted to food. That felt almost sinful. How could you possibly manage to make a setup like that?

And then he ducked into a Moondoes Coffee Shop and found out. "...What?" is all he can manage for a moment.

But only for a moment.

"Lot of trouble for some nutrition. Guess you can't help it, though. Not standardized here. Oh, this is going to be such a pain." He cuts through the line--easy enough when you're two heads taller than everyone else--and bends down to examine the cooler full of all sorts of colored liquids, packets, and whatsits on plates.

"And all of it's human-sized. Tiny people, tiny portions, no concern for proper beings." Not that he looks much different from human right now. Details!

"You--" he straightens up to loom in the direction of whoever's closest. "What's 'coffee'?"


D. Outside Jeopardy 001: Ow.

So. Several hours later, he'd finally read the rest of his profile. They'd assigned him to an address in a region called Jeopardy. What presumption! He wasn't going to do what they told him to!

But he was going to go and check it out anyway.

Going to Jeopardy meant another trip through a Porter and another round of being aggressively dissuaded by tiny humans from taking a closer look at its workings. Hmph! Well, he'd need better tools to really make any headway, regardless. Time to strategize about that. Bash some theories together.

"Gotta work like Orokin portals. Obviously. Don't have many documented for real-to-real gates but it's the same principle 's teleportation. Know that part already, that's the easy part."

He's too engrossed in thinking about it all to remember one very important thing as he approaches Jeopardy #001.

"Gotta have a torsion device stashed away somewhere. Wonder how much they can reprogram them. How much I could."

He forgot that human doorways are tiny, horrible little things. Normally he'd be so tall that he'd remember. But in this new body he was a head shorter. Short enough to make the door look reasonable, but a couple of centimeters too tall to fit.

"But if they've cracked open routes through the Void, shouldn't there be--Hngh!"

Tyl Regor, chief researcher and pioneer in the fight against clone rot syndrome, bestowed his purpose by the Queens themselves, has just smacked his forehead directly into a doorframe.

He's still out on the street. People might've seen.

This is literally the worst thing that has ever happened, to anyone, ever.

Comments

D

[detectivedwloki]

Detective David Loki isn't far away, having also newly arrived and finding his own new accommodation in Jeopardy 002. That's one way to introduce the neighbours...

He does see the unusual sight, made a little less intimidating by the sight of it hitting its head on the door. He's already noticed that there were cyborgs around, on the network so he isn't as surprised by this as he could have been.

Regardless, he does pause to watch for a moment as he nears Jeopardy 002, just observing.

[biochemastery]

Ngh! He'd forgot about the doors. Bout how tiny humans were. Also, that not all doors were automatic.

You try to crack open one ancient tomb and this is what happened. Honestly, he should've just stayed in the lab that day. Not worth the hassle. Not worth the--

Someone had seen him.

"You! Human! Tell no one."

[detectivedwloki]

"You need any help?"

He's not sure what to make of this, and he's alert if it's aggressive or thinking of attacking. You never knew for sure how others were going to react. Being a cop had taught him that lesson very well, and you should always be ready for a dangerous situation.

[biochemastery]

"No." Ugh. Now ducking would make him look stupid. He could turn human again, but he didn't want to.

...Especially when one of them was watching him. "Show's over. Go away." Or he was going to get angry. Probably should be already, but maybe the door'd rattled his brains.

[detectivedwloki]

The curt attitude had Loki's instincts up and he wasn't one to back down due to orders or aggression. Instead, he began walking closer.

"Do you live here, sir?"

Maybe this was a break-in in progress.

C

[callmesuperboy]

Conner eyed the man? man. And smiled. A newbie, huh? Okay. He thought for a moment, then spoke.

"Its wonderful stuff, and a drink that stimulates the system. Has some acidic content but it is mostly a good tasting drink."

He hesitated again, then nodded. "Try a small drink first, plain, maybe, then try adding cream and sugar a little at a time, to see what you like." Conner was not sure about the best advice, but he had had to relearn everything himself and was trying to help this person not make his mistakes.

[biochemastery]

"Oh, stims." Of course it was drugs! That was why so many people were lined up here. "They just hand those out here? Really? Huh."

You know what? Yes. Stims sounded good. His brain was bouncing all over the place, as it had every right to do when he'd been so rudely interrupted by... whatever was going on here. A proper dose of this stuff would focus him.

"Small, though?" He can see some humans wandering 'round with cups as big as their heads. Their tiny, almost microscopic little heads. "No. Don't trust what you people call small."

[callmesuperboy]

"Minor ones. But yes. A lot of people use it that way." Conner nodded as he considered that.

"They sell those here, Anything stronger a doctor has to prescribe, I think." He had no idea how that worked. He'd never needed anything like that.

"I like the tastes, because they mix a lot of things in, and you can get all sorts of varieties."

At the other man's words, he chuckled. "The stims are smaller, I mean, less strong. You can get glasses of... well, a lot of coffee, and for a lot of people, it is stronger than they are used to."

[biochemastery]

"'s not a question of if I can handle the stims, it's if the stims are up to my standards," he scoffed. Did he really seem like somebody who'd never tried a stim before? Half his specialties were biochemical! Of course he'd beta tested some of his own work before.

Wait. What was that other word in there? Oh! "Right, right, food has tastes, almost forgot." Look, it'd been a while since he bothered, alright? And it wasn't like protein slurry was worth thinking about that much.

Anyway! Stims. Wanted some. "You--" he shamelessly cut in line to point at the human behind the counter. "Coffee. Enough of it to be worth it."

[callmesuperboy]

Conner chuckled. "Alright." He was already forming an interesting picture of this person. Someone from another world, and one in which stimulants were called stims, something Conner had only heard of on his world in the future, and in science fiction novels. And the guy seemed a little sensitive. Hmmm. new, maybe.

"Are you new to this world?"

Conner nodded, peering at the guy, curious.

"You should wait in line. Everyone here is also waiting to buy some coffee." He sighed. Why?

A

[lootsnshoots]

Cayde watches this play out with a kind of resignation that, ah, today was just going to be one of those days.

"Hey hey hey, easy there big guy. You're gonna pop something," he says, brushing his hand away.

"But I guess I get to say 'Welcome to Earth.'"

[biochemastery]

"Earth! Ugh," he recoiled in response to the word, smacking a hand to his forehead. "Figures this sort of thing'd be hiding on Earth. This planet's such a pain."

"And you, you, what are--" He steps back, head tilting down to look at this something's midsection.

"Not Solaris." He looks back up at the face. "Not Corpus, not Tenno, no miscellany I can think of you look like either. Got snatched away too?" He's just gonna assume.

[lootsnshoots]

Oh great. Somebody thought it'd be fun to slam an Earth-hating ImPort into meaty human cosplay. Why can't the scientists here content themselves with blowing things up, like reasonable scholars?

Anyway, it's amazing how he keeps saying words but Cayde understands maybe half of it.

"Exo," he says, matter-of-factly. "And yeah, I got nabbed ... hell's bells, almost a year ago."

[biochemastery]

"Exo. Interesting." Not interesting enough to override how miserably sorry for himself he was feeling at the moment, but interesting enough that he'd remember later.

"A year--An Earth year? This's been running that long and nobody's found it? How?" Yeah, there was a lot of Earth, but you'd think somebody, even Vay Hek, would notice something like this!

[lootsnshoots]

"Way longer than that, from what I understand. And this isn't even the first iteration. As for why nobody's found it? Hell if I know. Time weirdness? Maybe it's going way faster in here than in our own timelines. That's outside my area of expertise, though."

Ikora or Osiris would be the people to ask about these sorts of things. But for some enlightened reason, the Vanguard with the least expertise and most disastrous experience with this kind of chicanery got brought here instead.

A

[fireandhoney]

Finn is used to seeing strange-looking fellows ever since he got to Earth. Void, he's even dating someone he thought looked kind of weird at first, what with the weird mix of human and Argonian features. Any time he sees someone like Tyl, he just assumes they're an imPort, or part of whatever weirdness is going on that week.

He's also absolutely in grabbing range.

Finn's eyes widen as he finds himself grabbed and this stranger asking questions right in his face.

"Er... this is Earth. As for your body, that you'd have to go to the DMV to find out." He's kidding, but that might not translate since he looks a bit weirded out at the moment.

[biochemastery]

"Earth!" He releases whoever-this-is almost instantly, pacing away a few steps cos he can't stand still with that sort of revelation. "Of course it had to be Earth." Should've guessed, but in his defense he was still waffling between believing that and his budding theory that this was some cephalon-driven simulacrum somewhere.

...And now he's circled back around to grab the man again. "The what? Where? Tell me."

[fireandhoney]

Finn is straightening out his jean jacket when the tall man grabs him again, once more making Finn's red eyes widen.

"I was kidding. Trust me, I wouldn't wish the DMV on my worst enemy." He's been in the process of learning to drive, so he's been there at least once. "I honestly don't know why they stuck you in a rudimentary unfashionable body."

[biochemastery]

"I don't find that funny," his eyes narrowed. Still didn't know what a deemvee even was.

"And you? not seen your type before." He pokes the whatever-this-is in the nose. "This one's yours, or was somebody trying to to get artistic?"

[fireandhoney]

Finn has half a mind to give this man a point blank Unrelenting Force for that poke.

"It's mine. I'm a Dunmer," Finn finds himself extra glad that he got to keep his body upon being ported in. "Though they say we look like this because a god cursed us."

D

[leatherboots]

It was the word portals that caught Rupert's attention. Even from the comfort of his bed, where he's been idly flicking through the network for the past hour, he can hear the muttering from someone coming up the street. And that all important p-word is just too close to home (literally) for him to ignore it.

He leaps from his bad and hurries to the window overlooking the street, and watches with shameless curiosity as a man (or something quite close to it) approaches their door. His door. And immediately rebounds off it.

Rupert barks with laughter, unlatching his bedroom window to hang out of it and address the newcomer with an easy, cheerful grin.

"Tricky things, doors. Would you like to try again?"

[biochemastery]

He glared up at the--wait, why was there a human in there?

More importantly, he was being mocked, and that was not allowed.

"Dunno, not sure I can handle it," he replied, all fake breeziness. He was gonna--wait, wait, had an idea. He could still turn himself normal, right? Right. The profile said so.

"Just can't figure it out, why they'd build it all so minuscule." He was looking at what little he could see of the room behind the human now, getting a fix on where things were. Whether the ceiling was tall enough, or if he'd have to duck.

[leatherboots]

"Handle it, yes, I see what you did there," Rupert drawls, regardless of whether the newcomer - his new housemate, presumably - intended the pun or not. This was all far too amusing for him to actually go downstairs and help the new housemate; watching from the wings (or gods, as it were) and providing helpful advice is much more fun.

He settles down, crossing his arms over the window sill, and beams smugly down at the Tyl by the door. Perhaps he should record this. It might even go viral, as they say nowadays.

"Go on, have another try. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time."

[biochemastery]

Obviously he'd meant the pun! Half his entertainment came from talking circles around other grineer, his puns are of the highest quality.

"Or better 'n that..." Right. Normal body. Normal body. Come on--Ha! Normal body! All 230 cm of perfectly engineered beauty.

"Better 'n that, I do this." From his perspective, the world distorted and curved impossibly, too quickly to make much sense off, and then he was looming behind the human, his sudden appearance paired with a strange hissing noise of suddenly displaced air.

"I think I've got the hang of it."

A

[rebelarrow]

Judd might have adapted to touch since joining SnowDancer, but much like the wolves he lived with, he's very selective about just who exactly has that privilege. And this weirdo is definitely not one of them. With a small force of tk, he forces the stranger to take several steps back.

"When you find out, let me know." Judd's voice is almost utterly toneless, with a heaping pile of ice topped off for good measure.